March 21, 2018--Fakebook: Psychographics

Here's the worst part about Facebook's turning over to Cambridge Analytica intimate data about 50 million of its subscribers. 50 million of us.

It's not that by doing so they violated our privacy or that this then allowed CA to precision-market products, services, and political candidates to us. Not just, in one example, enabling them to zap ads to us about books in general but books about the history of the American presidency to someone, like me, who bought on line a shelf of presidential biographies. This is not what is most concerning.

This sort of focused marketing predates by decades the invention of the Internet. Most powerful at the time was direct marketing, where one could purchase lists of "pre-qualified" potential customers who might be interested in, say, fishing equipment because they subscribed to Field & Stream.

And what's worst is not how, with the all-powerful Internet, marketers are able to make their pitches in micro-focused and cost-effective ways.

By aggregating and analyzing big data that Amazon and Google and Facebook have about each of us, marketing firms can construct psychological profiles of us--psychographics--that help guide their sales strategies in extraordinarily targeted ways. 

But again, this is not the worst part of what is being exposed as the current Cambridge Analytica scandal, with Facebook, Fakebook's clumsy enablement, unfolds. 

Also still not the worst thing is the direct involvement of deep stater Trumpians such as the scary Mercer family of billionaires or their previously bought-and-paid-for poodle, Steve Bannon. As reprehensible as their attempts have been to undermine American democracy (we would be wise to remember this is their goal), no, what is worst is our willing complicity in this. 

Allow me to repeat that--It's about our complicity. About how if it weren't for us there would be no Cambridge Analytica, no cyber-meddling to fraudulently strengthen Trump's side in the 2016 election, and no big data to make this possible.

The reason CA and others can, for their scurrilous purposes, put their hands on intimate information about tens of millions of us is because we have willingly and eagerly shared this data about ourselves.

For example, Facebook users casually reveal how old they are, how much education they have, where they live, what they "like" when it comes to music and books and food and clothing and movies and the entertainments we download on line. 

When we click "like" on a "friend's" posting we reveal something about what is important to us, whether it be cultural, political, and even spiritual. We casually reveal what medications we use when ordering drugs on line, where we vacation, how much money we have, what kind of car we drive, how we earn a living, how we recreate, what languages we speak, our sexual orientation and preferences as well as the kinds of families we belong to and our world of friend.

I could go on for thousands of words just making this list of the kinds of information we "share" about ourselves without much persuasion or thought. 

We tell all to Facebook and other social network and e-commerce sites. And then this data, in the hands of the likes of Amazon and Cambridge Analytica become essential to fueling their metastasizing reach and power.

In our post-privacy world most of us do not think twice before revealing intimate details about ourselves. In fact, many Facebook members who are comfortable indulging their narcissism or gossipy side enjoy letting it all hang out on line and can't get enough of listening in, so the speak, to the details of their "friend's" lives, they are so casual about this that they seemingly do not care about what in the process, even unintentionally, they reveal about themselves.

It is dangerous that in addition to being indiscriminate about what we share, while oblivious to what bottom-feeding operations such as Cambridge Analytica can mash together to create a psychographic portrait of each of us that is so detailed it can be deployed not only to sell us stuff we don't need but also can be used to influence our vote. 

In large part, as a result, we have Donald Trump as our president.